


cor cordium

by gaygiggling



Category: Minecraft (Video Game), Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Angst, Fluff and Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Like. A lot, M/M, Mental Illness, Mentions of Death, Smoking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-15
Updated: 2021-02-15
Packaged: 2021-03-17 08:15:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,053
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29468571
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gaygiggling/pseuds/gaygiggling
Summary: After the death of his mother, George navigates through the demanding repercussions of his isolation.He meets Dream, and realises he's not so alone anymore.cor cordium(latin: heart of hearts)
Relationships: Clay | Dream & GeorgeNotFound (Video Blogging RPF), Clay | Dream/GeorgeNotFound (Video Blogging RPF)
Comments: 37
Kudos: 198





	cor cordium

**Author's Note:**

> hi it's agora again! i promise waterlily will be updated soon but i wanted to put this piece up first. it was an idea that was given to me and i couldn't stop thinking about it. please note the tags and be careful as you read. it's emotionally heavy and very draining, and it took me probably 20 hours to write.
> 
> enjoy, my lovelies.

It’s raining. 

Soft drizzle patters down from gloomy clouds, filling in the stench of silence that shrouds over lingering grief and black clothes. 

“In the name of God, our merciful Father,” the priest drones, the look of cursed nonchalance engraved in the planes of his face. “we commit Lucy Davidson to the peace of the grave.”

George stands, throat painfully thick, hands numb by his side. His eyes are trained on the coffin, like it demands his attention, and he dare not say no to his mother even if she was six feet under. The silence is dizzying; he wishes for a hand on his shoulder, a small word of comfort, but the throngs of people who flocked to see his mother lowered into dirt barely recognised him.

It’s not like he recognised them either, but it would have been nice.

“From dust you came, to dust you shall one day return.” The priest speaks, and an eerie quiet settles over George’s heart. He’s heard that before, thousands of times. Standing over a polished black coffin in a neatly tailored suit that was starting to wear, he’d done it too many times for his liking.

In his hands he holds a single white rose.  _ Mom’s favourite _ , he thought that morning, fixing his lapel and cuffing his sleeves. He picked one from the mountains of bouquets that lay limply on the dining table, cards still hanging off of them.

He didn’t read them. He didn’t have to. They’d all say the same thing:  _ My condolences. I’m so sorry. If you need anything, just call. Stay strong. _

He’s been strong all his life, shouldering on the burning weight of his father’s death on his lonesome, and now, piled haphazardly on top, his mother’s. None of his siblings returned home for the funerals, and the nagging filial obligation in him was more than willing to deal with it all on his own.

A single drop of rain falls squarely on his nose. He glances up, looking into the overcast sky. Seemingly perfect weather for a day like this. He blinks slowly, watching as the clouds cried for him, his voided heart rotting in its confines. 

George lowers his gaze back to eyeline, settling among the foliage that blankets the funeral-goers in comforting shade. Someone looks at him, and he stares back.

Clean, crisp black suit, black shirt, black tie. His hands are shoved deep into his pockets, and an easy smile sat comfortably on his lips. His blond hair, untouched by the rain, swayed gently in the breeze. His emerald eyes seem to look right into George, reaching past stained glass windows and plucking his soul from the depths of his cold body.

George frowns. 

_ Who are you? _

Somewhere in his subconscious, familiarity floods his brain. Melancholic nostalgia blurs his vision as he stares at the man.

_ Where have I seen you before? _

The priest clears his throat, and George’s eyes snap to his, reeling back from the mystery of the blonde man in the shade. “ _ Eulogy, _ ” the priest mouths, and George nods. He steps to fill in the place the priest left for him at the head of the grave, staring out into expectant eyes and painted grief. He breathes shallowly, fumbling for the folded notebook paper in his pocket.

“Hi,” he begins, trying a weary smile. “I’m George Davidson. I’m Lucy’s son.”

A murmur spread across the crowd, soft but not soft enough. “ _ That’s him? _ ” he could hear. “ _ He looks terrible now. _ ” 

Another part of him dies inside. He knows he does- he spent hours that morning studying the tightly wound rings under his eyes, dark and offensive. He cursed himself for forgoing shaving the night before, a shadow of stubble lining his chin. His cheeks were hollow, bones pressing jarringly against his translucent skin. He looked terrible, he knows, the spark in his amber eyes long faded, extinguished into nothingness. 

His thumbs twiddle and he has to push past the inhibitions that stopper in his throat to continue speaking. He glances down at the worn piece of paper, a couple of raindrops splattering the ink. “Lucy was a wonderful mother, and a friend to all of you, I’m sure. She was a lively spark, a woman of generosity and kindness, and she brought happiness everywhere she went.” 

His eyes dart to catch the blond man’s again, his smile pitiful, gaze sympathetic. George hates pity- always has, since his father died and he resented the touch of another’s on his shoulder accompanied by the words, “ _ I’m sorry. _ ” 

_ What the fuck are you sorry for? _ he’d always think. 

He grits his teeth and continues. “When my father died years ago, I could tell that all my mother wanted to do was to see him again.” His voice is sharp, crystal clear, chin tilted up. God forbid if anyone looked down at him in sympathy. Sympathy is weakness, and George is not weak. 

“So I stand here now, confident when I say that she is in a happier, better place.” 

He glances sideways to the priest, who offers him a watery smile. 

“From dust we came, to dust we shall one day return.” He repeats the priest’s words. “Death is imminent, and I choose to rejoice in a life that has been lived fully, rather than to grieve in its end.”

_ Lies. Liar. Fucking liar. _

“Thank you all for coming.”

_ You’re a fucking liar. _

“Thank you for loving my mother as she once loved you.”

_ You’re weak. Pathetic.  _

“God bless.”

_ You’re empty. You’re void. You’re nothing. _

He offers the party a smile before dipping back into to blend with the crowd. His fingers are numb, shaking as his mind reels. Two eulogies, now. Not long before he’d be back for one of his estranged siblings, spewing more bullshit about love and life. 

George can’t help the way his eyes search for the blond man again, catching his gaze across the miles of road and sea that separate them. He wants to stalk over to him, take him by the shoulders and shake him.  _ “Who are you? _ ” He’d scream in his face.  _ “Who the fuck are you? _ ”

A warm hand lands on his shoulder, and George tenses at the touch. He turns to face the perpetrator, a little old lady who couldn’t be more than 60 smiling up at him. “You’re a strong boy,” she coos, her grey eyes sparkling with some type of wicked kindness. He doesn’t like the way they’re treating him, like fresh porcelain, like he’s fragile. He wants to be smashed, shattered into pieces, left on the road as the rain washes away any evidence he was ever alive. 

“Thank you,” he whispers back. “A lot of people say that.”

“Because it’s true,” she muses. “You’ve been through so much, alone. You deserve more than this. You deserve to be weak, to let go.”

_ To be weak, to let go. _

George forces a smile before gently shrugging her small, delicate hand off his shoulder. He turns his attention back, eyes searching for the blonde man.

He’s gone. 

George blinks. Darts around his peripherals to see if he’d moved, if the rain had gotten to his spot in the foliage. 

Not a trace. George feels a crippling loneliness, one he’d long since put away, start to eat at his heart. 

* * *

“Mr Davidson?” 

George looks up, yanked out of his half-slumbering reverie. The receptionist at the counter is waving her hand at him, concern crossing her features. He looks at her for a moment. She’s simple-looking, nothing exciting, nothing to be remembered. “She’s ready for you now,” she says softly, the same way one held the stem of a freshly cut rose. 

He draws his lower lip between his teeth before getting up. This isn’t his idea; his sister had called the office for him and scheduled an appointment. “You’ve gotta get out of the house, Georgie,” she drawled. “You’ve been alone for weeks now. I’m surprised you’re still alive.”

“Well, if you guys had come back for the funeral,” he said, rolling his eyes. He knew that the topic of her moving away and never coming back stung, and he wanted it to. He wanted her to feel the pain he’d felt, dealing with both funerals all on his own, not even having the comfort of his siblings by his side.

“George,” she began. “You know I couldn’t come back. My whole life is-”

“Bullshit,” he muttered.

“George!” She exclaimed. “Watch your mouth.”

“What? I’m completely alone. It doesn’t fucking matter what I say.”

She was silent after that, and he didn’t bother continuing the conversation. The silence was poignant, tense.

“I’m gonna go now.” He said, moving the receiver away from his ear.

“Wait.” 

He paused, before bringing the phone back to his ear. “What?” he spat, his fingers itching for a cigarette.  _ Only when I’m stressed _ , he justified to nobody.

Her words were timid. “Go for the appointment, okay? I’m sorry we had to leave you on your own, but-” She sighed. “Well, there’s no excuse for the way we handled it. I’m sorry, and I just want you to get better. I care about you.”

He chuckled lifelessly. “If you really cared that much, you would have come home.” 

George didn’t wait for her reply. He dropped the receiver like it burned, singing his fingertips and hung up. 

He remembers this now as he shuffles through sickly clean white hallways, medicated and sterilised. A part of him wants to kick over the bin, push over the neat stack of papers that sat on a counter, just put some humanity in this inhumane place. He reaches door 26, and knocks.

“Come in,” he hears, and he pushes his weight onto the handle, sliding into the room.

It’s bare, save for a large table and two chairs. The blinds have been drawn, swaying lightly in the breeze of the air conditioner, letting the sun slip into the room in sheets of golden. He watches as a woman swivels around in her chair, facing him. Her face is ordinary; you know those faces that just  _ feel _ comforting? They exude optimism, gentleness- George feels bile rise in his throat at the unfamiliarity of it all. 

“Hi.” She starts. “George Davidson, am I right?”

“Yeah.”

She smiles. It doesn’t feel fake. “Have a seat, George.” She gestures towards a plastic chair opposite her, grey and welcoming. He slides into it, shifting awkwardly.

“I understand you didn’t make this appointment for yourself.”

“No.”

“And why’s that?”

“Because my asshole sister would rather I see a medium than come home.” George spits, his voice laced with apathetic venom. “I don’t want to be here.”

To his surprise, her expression doesn’t change. “If I’m being honest, neither do I.” She says, reclining into her chair. “But, since we’re here, we might as well get you the help you need.”

George’s chest burns with a cross between embarrassment and annoyance. “I don’t need help.”

She raises an eyebrow. “Are you sure?” She asks, smiling. “Because it looks to me like you’re majorly messed up.”

The rest of the session continues just as it’d started. George gives barely-there replies, reclining back in his chair with his arms crossed over his chest, and Dr Murphy guides him through the last few years of his miserable life. She doesn’t stop drilling him for answers, digging into the recesses of his mind, unearthing his past that he so desperately wanted to keep under. 

He cannot wait for his hour to be over. 

As the clock nears 12, Dr Murphy glances up. Back down, at him, and then to her left, scanning her computer screen. “George,” she starts. “Are you on medication?”

He snorts. “No. I’ve never even been to this clinic before.”

“I would like to start you on some,” she says, reaching for a slip of paper and a pen. “Not much, but just enough to get you through your day.”

George frowns. “I don’t need medication. I’ve been doing completely fine on my own.”

“I don’t doubt it, George.” She continues writing, the scratching sounds of pen on paper making his skin itch. “But I think that it would be beneficial for you.”

“Aren’t you only supposed to give this shit out to people who actually- you know, want it? People who want to be helped?”

The piece of paper is folded, creased, and slid across the table to him, weighted under one dark green manicured finger. “Are you saying you don’t want to be helped, George?”

The weight of her stare is enough to make him uncomfortable. Her eyes are sharp, gaze poignant, like she knows everything he doesn’t want her to. He’d tried so hard to get through the session giving her the least amount of information about his life as possible, and yet he feels like he’s been ripped open, chest vulnerable, secrets alight.

He snatches the prescription. “Where do I take this?” he asks, fist threatening to crumple the paper. It burns in his hand, and he’s sure he can smell the singed flesh of his palm.

“Take it to the pharmacy, just next to the counter.” She watches him as he gets up noisily, pushing the chair back with him. He makes for the door, pressing a heavy hand to the handle. 

He stops. Hesitation eats him alive and he stares daggers into his unmoving hand.  _ Get out, idiot! Why aren’t you moving?  _ He breathes shallowly, and against all his wishes, turns back to face Dr Murphy.

She’s waiting for him. “George,” she says lowly. “I hope to see you again soon.”

“I don’t want to come back here.” His voice wavers, words shivering as they leave his lips. “This was a waste of time.”

Dr Murphy smiles. “Then why did you turn back?”

A flash of cold runs through his body, scuttling down his vertebrae, numbing his fingers. George clenches his jaw and pushes down roughly on the door handle, ramming the door with his shoulder. He bursts outside, letting the door fall shut, and with quivering hands, makes his way back to the reception. 

Shoulder meets shoulder in a painful collision, one that bounces back and snaps him out of the brooding cloud of his thoughts. George looks up, and the words he was ready to hurl die in his throat.

The man with the blond hair and emerald eyes glares back at him.

“Watch it,” he snarls. “Haven’t you got any fucking eyes?”

His voice is angelic, even wrapped around curses spat at George. It’s low, comforting, just like his sympathetic smile back at the funeral. George wants to carve it out of his face. 

The man brushes against his shoulder, knocking rudely against him again to get past George, and George can’t do anything more than stare at his retreating figure, mind reeling, tongue ablaze.

* * *

He doesn’t take the medication. 

The sweet old lady at the pharmacy smiled at him pitifully as she scanned his prescription. He wanted to reach over the counter and knock her teeth out of her mouth- but he settled for scratching at his arms, goosebumps lining his uncomfortable vessel of skin. 

“10 mg of escitalopram every night,” she muttered to herself, turning around to face the walls of medication behind her. “Is this your first prescription?”

“Yes.” George said simply. 

She hummed, plucking a bottle from the shelves, uncapping it. The pills spilled out in a clatter, white and harmless and innocent looking.

George wanted to throw up. 

She counted a three-month dosage, pouring them into a clear bottle with a white cap. “I know what you’re thinking,” she says. “Where are those orange pill bottles? The ones in the television shows?”

He wasn’t thinking that, but he played along. 

“I was thinking just that,” he murmured. 

The pharmacist laughed. “We don’t own any. I don’t know where they got that idea from, but I’ve worked here for 40 years. Never seen an orange bottle in my life.” 

She placed the bottle on the granite counter that separated them. “One a day, at night. You can take them in the morning if you forget, or if that fits better into your schedule.” Her grey eyes glittered with that wisdom only an old lady could possess. “Don’t be afraid. I’ve seen too many young men just like you through those doors. Each of them come in with the exact same look. Same one you got on now.” She placed a gloved hand on the counter next to the pill bottle, in what George assumed to be an attempt to be sympathetic. 

“They all get better. You just need to want to get better.” 

“I don’t need to get better.” 

His hand came up to take the pill bottle, feeling its unfamiliarity in his calloused palm, looking down at the tiny letters that spell out his full name, his vulnerability, his weakness. 

“Oh honey,” she drawled. “Nobody  _ needs _ to. But it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t  _ want _ to.”

The pill bottle sits proudly on his bathroom counter, taunting him every time he walks past. He has half a mind to just flush its contents down the drain, but a persistent part of him wants to keep it, just in case. Just in case he decides to take it one day. Just in case he wants to change. Just in case one day he changes his mind, and this life he’s living is worth the years of loneliness and pain and torment he’s gone through. 

_ Just in case he wants to get better. _

He stands now on his balcony in nothing but a ratty singlet and a pair of grey sweatpants, leaning against the railing into the gloomy London skyline. London is possibly the worst place to live- no sun, no light, no free vitamin D or serotonin. That’s probably why everyone moved away, he thinks, taking another drag of his cigarette. 

The smoke warms him up from the inside, but it doesn’t stop the chill from numbing his fingers. Vapour leaves through his nose as he sighs deeply, turning to extinguish the cigarette on his ashtray on the table next to him, dropping the burnt out butt onto the growing pile. 

_ I should clear that out,  _ he thinks.  _ And while I’m at it, get a fucking coffee. _

He has no plans for the day; to be fair, he never does. His job as a freelance programmer didn’t ever have a schedule, and even less so now that he wasn’t actively taking jobs. His parents had left all their inheritance to him; the house they lived in, their savings, their possessions. “None to any of your flighty sisters,” his father had remarked to him, months before he died. “If they can’t bring themselves home, they don’t deserve any of it.”

He didn’t want to treat it like money to burn through, to never have to take another job in his life. It is definitely enough to last him the next couple of years comfortably, but he wanted more to his life than sitting on his couch watching reruns of old TV shows and rotting away into the wallpaper. 

George picks up the ashtray and opens the sliding door back into his apartment, crossing over to the kitchen and tipping the dusty contents in. 

What a shame he couldn’t even gather enough energy to leave his house, then.

He sets the tray down, turning to his coffee machine and slamming the on button. It rumbles noisily, the power button blinking white, before promptly dying again. His eyebrows pinch together, jamming the on button again.

It doesn’t respond. 

“Are you fucking kidding me,” he spits, rolling his eyes. “Fine. Whatever. You’re centuries old anyway.”

It still doesn’t respond. 

His tongue is itching for the bitterness of black coffee to wash away the venom of his cigarette, uncomfortable and scratching. He knows there’s a coffee shop just a ways away downstairs, and he could grab some coffee and be back up here in just a couple of minutes. 

“I gotta fucking change, then,” he mutters, stalking over to his bedroom. He manoeuvres through piles of discarded clothing, making a mental note to take a trip down to the laundromat sometime this week and clear all this up.

Pulling on a cardigan and a pair of trainers, he steps out of his apartment for the first time since his appointment at the clinic. He wraps his cardigan around himself, hiding the protruding bones and offensively sick-looking body his singlet does nothing to cover. 

“Afternoon,” somebody greets him as he walks through the hallway. He looks up to meet the gaze of a pretty girl, probably around his age. She’s smiling, her hair bright and smooth under the fluorescent lights. George feels like he’s seen her before, noting the familiarity of her face, the curve of her jaw. “I haven’t seen you in ages.”

It hits him. “Amanda,” he breathes. “Hi. Yeah, I- I haven’t been out in a while.”

They’d slept together months ago, before George’s mom died and before George hid himself away in his apartment and only ever came out to collect mail or buy food or some shit. It was one of his many drunken accidents, when he had come over to ask her something about the plumbing and they ended up on the couch, whispers and moans filling the air. 

He left before she woke up. Ran a cold shower and pinched himself awake, and avoided her for a whole week. He let her calls run without declining, ignored her knocks on his door. He never felt bad about it.

“You look terrible,” she says curtly. 

He huffs out a laugh. “Well, you look pretty decent yourself.” 

“I heard about your mother. I’m really sorry.”

There it is again.  _ I’m sorry.  _ He has to bite his lip to stop himself from yelling at her, condemning her sympathy, asking her,  _ What the fuck are you sorry for? _ Instead he breathes shallowly, meeting her brown eyes. 

Not a speck of pity in them. 

“Don’t worry about it.” He says, shrugging. “Not anything I haven’t already gone through.”

Amanda smiles weakly. “Don’t die, Davidson.” she says, pushing her door open. “It’ll be real inconvenient for the rest of us.”

He wants to laugh. “On the contrary,” he rebuts. “I think it’ll be a lot better once I’m gone.”

* * *

George pushes open the door to the coffee shop just in time before the rain starts to pour heavily on the pavement. It swings shut as he wipes his hands down on his cardigan, pushing him further into the aura of fresh pressed coffee beans and mellow contemplation. He looks at the people sitting on couches, talking with their friends, the students hammering away at their laptops, the buzzing hum of life snaking under his flesh. 

_ Get coffee, and get out.  _

“What can I get for you today, sir?” The barista starts for him, hand poised with a marker pen on a coffee cup. His smile burns holes into George’s retinas, and he glances up at the menu board even though he already knows what he wants.

“I’ll just get a black coffee, please,” George murmurs, fishing his wallet from his pocket. “Medium size, or whatever you call it.”

“Right on,” the barista chirps, and George just wants to snatch the coffee cup out of his hand, fill it up himself and step back outside. He glances to the left;  _ fuck. _

_ It’s pouring. _

“That’ll be  £2. Can I have a name please?”

“George.” He says, placing a two pound coin on the counter before moving along and waiting at the end of the counter. He watches as people come and go, laughing and touching and just  _ being _ , and George can’t imagine how fucking  _ plain _ their lives must be. 

He can’t help but admit that they’re probably happy, too.

“Black coffee for George?” 

He grabs it from the counter and offers a quick smile for the barista, murmuring a soft “Thank you,” before stalking in the direction of the door. Before him, sheets of rain fall from the rainclouds, and he has no umbrella. 

“Are you fucking with me?” he sighs, drawing his bottom lip between his teeth. Rolling his eyes he steers right, gaze catching the first empty seat that he sees. He slides into the seat, cozied up next to the window, and watches as the torrents of rain wash the world away.

Maybe he’s glad to be out. Maybe he’s glad to spend more than an hour out of his apartment, somewhere other than the smoky confines of his den. Maybe he’s glad to be around other people, in another environment. Maybe he’s glad he’s not alone. 

His heart aches in his chest as he sips at his coffee. It’s terrible, bitter and foul-tasting, but it wakes him up. 

For the first time, he craves somebody next to him.

“Is this seat taken?”

He’s broken out of the clouds of his reverie. “No,” he begins, looking up.

_ You. _

All words die on his tongue as he stares up at the blond man with the emerald eyes. 

_ It’s you. _

“Great.” The blond flashes him a dizzying smile, sliding into the seat across from him. “This rain is crazy, isn’t it?”

His accent is so blatantly American, it hurts George to listen to it. “Yeah,” he mutters. “Yeah, it is.”

They sit in silence for a second, the man opposite him sipping at his own drink- a latte, George thinks. The man reaches across the tables for the newspaper, shaking it open. 

“Have you got a pen?” He asks. It takes a second for George to register that he’s just said something, caught up in the way his words wrap around his tongue, fall from his pretty pink lips. Any trace of sympathy he showed during the funeral is long gone now, replaced by genuine curiosity. “I like doing the crosswords.”

“Not on me, sorry.” George says back just a beat too long after. 

He hums. “No problem. I’ll just do it in my head.”

Silence. George is itching to talk again, to hear his voice once more. To ask him,  _ who are you? Why do I keep seeing you? _

A small sound escapes his throat. He covers it up with a cough. 

The man doesn’t even look up from the paper.

_ Fuck it. _ “I don’t think we’ve met.”

The man looks up, green gaze meeting George’s. “Well, think again.” he says, and returns his attention to the paper. 

George frowns, and huffs. “What is that supposed to mean?” 

“I mean, darling,” he sets the paper down on the table in front of them. His eyes seem to pierce right through George’s ones, and no matter how much he tries to shield himself off, the man digs straight into his sternum, leaving traces of liquid fire. “Think again.”

“We met at the clinic. And you were there at the funeral.”

He smiles. “Right. And so, we have met before.”

George is starting to get annoyed. “How do you keep finding me?”

The man shrugs, voice cool. “Coincidence.”

“I don’t even know who you are.”

“Do you have to?”

“How do you know my mother?”

He raises an eyebrow. “I don’t. I know you.” 

“I don’t fucking know who you are!” George bursts, and he can feel people looking at him. He doesn’t care, and bludgeons on. “Tell me who the fuck you are, or I’m calling the police.”

The man snorts. “For what? Just ‘cause we keep accidentally seeing each other?”

“Because you’re  _ stalking _ me.”

“You wish you were interesting enough for someone to stalk.”

George’s cheeks flush red. He can feel his ears heat up, the tips of his fingers tingling. He wants to climb over the table, this measly barrier that separates them, and wrangle every breath that he dares drop. He’s seething, and he wants nothing more than to get out and walk out, but the  _ fucking rain _ is pouring.

The man sees his discomfort, and revels smugly in it. “If it’s of any interest to you,” he begins again. “My name’s Dream.”

“Fuck kinda name is that?”

“My name.” Dream says sharply. “And I’ve known your family for a while. Particularly your sister.”

George snorts, crossing his arms across his chest. “So she sent you to spy on me? You’re not doing that good a job, I’m telling you.”

Dream’s laugh is weightless, and George wants to drink it in. It’s comfortable yet unsettling, and he wants to hear it forever.

“You only see me now and then when I want you to,” he says, taking another swig of his coffee. “Other times, you won’t even notice I’m around.”

“I find that hard to believe.”

Dream smiles at him, and George feels something unfamiliar bloom in his ribcage, a wicked sense of adoration pooling in his abdomen. He watches as the man stands, rising to a height George has to stop himself from drooling over. His eyes trail over his figure, the white-shirt that hugs him in all the right places, the sweatpants that George doesn’t dare look over. 

“I’m off,” Dream says, glancing sideways to the window, where the rain has slowed, softened to a gentle drizzle. “I have somewhere to be. I’ll be seeing you around, I guess.”

George’s tongue is numb. He wants to jump out of his chair, plant the noisiest kiss on Dream’s supple lips, feel the way his muscles curve and swell, submit himself to anywhere under him. “Wait.” 

Dream stops as his hand finds the door handle, looking back at George. 

“Give me your number.”

Dream’s chuckle surprises him. With a gentle shake of his head and a small wink thrown haphazardly in his direction, he leaves, disappearing into the grey haze of the London aftermath.

George makes a sound, erupting incredulity. “Fucking  _ prick _ ,” he mutters, settling back into his chair. “Absolute asshole.”

He ignores the concerned glances from the other patrons sitting near him, tipping the rest of his coffee into his mouth and gulping it desperately. His fingers are itching for a cigarette between them, and he has to grip the cup tightly to stop them from trembling. 

George gets up, chucking his cup into the bin before pushing his way out the door into the humid air. He huffs, wrapping his cardigan flush against his body. 

“Fuck kinda name is Dream, anyway?”

* * *

George goes home and takes the medication. 

The pill slides easily down his throat, and he waits for it to kick in. He sits on his couch, flicking through television channels, none of them holding his attention for more than a minute. He forgoes dinner for another cigarette and falls asleep just like that in front of his TV spewing static. 

When he wakes up from a dreamless sleep, he feels the same. 

He cleans his apartment, dumping armfuls of laundry into baskets, separating whites from colours. He tears the sheets off his bed too, stripping his pillows, stuffing it all into the hampers. Hours pass in several trips to the laundromat, sitting atop rumbling machines as he scrolls mindlessly through his Twitter feed.

He doesn’t stop thinking about Dream.

Absentmindedly he presses the search bar, typing in D, R, E, A, M. Only business accounts and the occasional K-pop fanpage. The uneasiness that settles over his heart is unfamiliar to him.

_ Who are you? _

On his last trip back from the laundromat he passes by the coffeeshop, looking in through the windows at the homely orange glow. He catches himself looking for blond hair, tall figure, emerald eyes- and curses himself for being so intrigued.

_ Who are you? _

He feels cold. Usually the cold is welcome- he likes it, showering in freezing water, spending hours on his balcony chill-bitten, but he aches for warmth now. He aches for blazen conversation and big, calloused hands. He aches for Dream, and he hates it.

George starts to look for him in places that he walks by. He dips by the coffee shop every morning, in vile hope that if he sits back down in the same coral couch next to the window, he would show up, sliding effortlessly back into the seat opposite him. 

It feels disgusting to be this hopeful. He walks back to his apartment in silent dejection, annoyed at himself for lowering to this level of  _ desperation _ . He looks at his phone every time it buzzes awake even though he knows it isn’t a text from Dream.

_ Who the fuck have I become? _

He yanks the sliding door open, crossing out into his balcony. Reaching into his pocket he pulls out his pack, placing it delicately between his lips. He lights it, and watches as the smoke dissipates in the London afternoon grey.

It calms him. To be here, looking out into the shitty skyline, smoking a pack of shitty cigarettes, it calms him. He smokes to remember, he smokes to forget. He smokes to put his tempestuous life back in order, he smokes to feel. 

It calms him more than it should.

He revels in its unfamiliarity. 

* * *

A week after he takes his medication for the first and last time, he sees Dream again.

It’s midnight, and George is in the middle of yet another Criminal Minds episode. He’s distracted, drinking cheap wine out of a stemless wine glass, legs thrown over the back of the couch. He’s slipping into dreamland slowly, eyelids drooping, vision blurring.

He feels something cold in his lap, and he wants to ignore it. He shuts his eyes, the television chatter white noise in his slumber. 

The glass shatters on the floor next to him. 

“You’re fucking-” he shoots up, and he sees blood red pooling on his joggers. He hisses as the cold seeps through his underwear. “God- fuck!”

He’s careful not to step on the jagged glass on the floor, yanking some tissue paper from the coffee table and drying himself off, muttering curses under his breath. He pricks himself twice picking up the shards, dropping them in the dustbin on the way to his bedroom to change. 

Not a single pair of fresh sweatpants to be found. George lets out a strangled sound of frustration, grabbing the first pair of athletic shorts he could find and pulling them over his hips. 

He looks at himself in the dusty mirror, and lets himself smile slightly. London night weather be damned, his ass looks great in these shorts. 

Glancing behind him, he watches the London nightlife inch by slowly. It’s his favourite pair of sweatpants, and god forbid there be a red wine stain right on his crotch. Surely there’s nobody at the laundromat now, is there? He hums, picking the sodden, damp sweatpants and making for the door. 

It’s cold. The chill bites at his unprotected legs, but he ignores it, powering through it to the warmth of the 24-hour laundromat. He sighs in relief when he walks in and it’s empty, only the hum of the heater breaking the pin-drop silence. He loads the washer and throws his sweatpants in, hoisting himself onto the washer opposite. He pulls his knees up to his chest, and watches at grey tumbles over and over and over.

He hasn’t said a single word of conversation to another person since Dream, other than the occasional barista asking him how his day was, or some old man asking how to get those laundry tokens. He’s fine like that- he’s never mind being alone. Even as a child, his sisters stuck together and never included him, and he learned to make do with that. At school, he didn’t have many friends, barely scraping by in group projects and making it into public university. 

George has been alone all his life.

So why now did he feel the need to have Dream by his side?

A shallow draft blows into the laundromat as the door creaks open. George’s heart hammers in his throat, bracing his arms behind him, and looks up.

“You again,” are the first words out of his mouth.

“Me again,” Dream smiles at him.

“I haven’t seen you since the coffee shop.”

“As I said.” Dream walks closer to him. George watches him, drinking in his freckles, the way his blond hair tufts to the left, the glimmer in his eyes. “You only see me when I want you to.”

George lets his legs fall, heels hitting the sturdy glass of the washer he’s sitting on. “I don’t like you.”

“Are you convincing me or you?”

He bludgeons on. “You’re arrogant. And cocky. And I don’t like the way you talk to me.”

“Well, man, I-”

“George.”

Dream cocks an eyebrow at the interruption. His voice is curious. “George?”

“Don’t call me ‘man’. My name’s  _ George. _ ” 

“George,” the man repeats, his pink lips curving around the syllable. “Boring name.”

“It’s better than whatever the fuck  _ Dream _ is.”

Dream laughs, bubbling out of his throat and George wants to close his fist around the column of his neck, and kiss every breath out of this poor man until he’s begging. He clenches his jaw at the tinkling airiness of Dream’s laugh, and tears his gaze away. 

Silence fills the gap between them, and George focuses his attention on the ticking countdown on his washer. This- Dream, here, near him- is all he’s wanted for the last week, and he’s just as infuriating as he was the first time they talked.

It excites George. It ignites a small kindle in his sternum, blue flame licking the emptiness of his ribcage. He wants the fight, he wants the banter. He wants to press himself flush against Dream’s chest and swallow him whole, kiss him until his knees buckle.

“Your thoughts are so loud.”

His head whips around to look at Dream. “What do you mean?”

“You’re burning a hole into the wall with your staring. Whatever you’re thinking about, it’s riling you up.” Dream says, leaning his hand on the washer next to the one George is sitting on. “Penny for your thoughts?”

George swallows thickly. “Why are you here right now?”

“I told you. You see me when I want you to see me.”

He rolls his eyes. “I know. I heard it the first sixty times.” He breathes in deeply, swathed by the fragrance of pinecone and fabric softener. He decides he likes it. “ _ Why  _ are you  _ here _ , at midnight?”

Dream shrugs. “I was passing by, and saw you through the glass doors. Thought I’d come in to say hi.” His gaze drops to George’s shorts, which are riding up his thighs. “Stayed for the ass.”

George snorts. “How crude,” he comments, pushing the rising arousal that pools in his groin even further down. 

“What brings you here?” Dream asks.

He points at the tumbling washer. “Spilt wine on my best sweatpants.”

“Ah.” 

George can feel the warmth of Dream’s hand, inches away from his bare thigh. He looks down, eyes trailing over Dream’s hand, veins paved delicately under his skin. His fingers are thick, adorned with silver rings, tipped pretty like honeysuckle. George wants them in his mouth.

They watch as the washer tumbles for a moment. George keeps Dream in his peripherals, watching as his chest grows and shrinks in the rhythm of his shallow breathing. He shifts his hand from behind him to his side, fingers brushing gently against Dream’s. His chest swells with sick pride as he catches Dream’s breathing hitch slightly.

His courage grows, inching his fingers closer to Dream’s, hovering just above them. They’re trembling, he can feel, with gilded expectation and icy desire. He’s never had to wait for what he wanted- people constantly fell to his feet, admiration twinkling in their eye as they feasted upon what they considered art rather than an actual being. But now, he’s never wanted something he couldn’t have, and it eats him alive. 

_ What are you waiting for? _

The washer beeps. The cycle’s finished and the tumble slows to a stop. George’s fingers still, and he begins to recoil them to brace his jump off the machine. 

“Don’t move.”

Dream’s voice is low and commanding, and George’s blood rushes to his ears. It’s not a suggestion, not a request. It’s an order.

He moves anyway. He hops off the machine, trying to hide the smugness of his smile as he unloads the washer, carrying the heavy heap into the dryer next to it. The cycle starts again, the rhythmic buzz of the machine filling the air.

“Didn’t I say, ‘Don’t move’?” George hears from behind him. He turns around, facing Dream.

“I had to unload it,” he smiles, voice laced with feigned innocence. “Doing laundry is a two-part activity, you know.”

Dream chuckles. “When I tell you to do something George,” he walks over to George, caging him between his long arms. “you do it.”

“And why should I do that?” George challenges, amber eyes hooded in faux disinterest. He can feel his heart pounding against the confines of his ribcage as Dream looms over him, and his knees threaten to buckle.

“You should shut your mouth,” Dream spits, and George revels in it. He smiles sweetly, pushing his face closer to Dream’s, his hot breath fanning against his lips.

“Make me.”

It’s Dream’s turn to smile, laced with an undertone of cruelty. His eyes flicker from George’s gaze, down to his lips, and back up. George wants to pull him in, collide together. Dream’s lips are  _ right there _ , and he starts to close in the gap. He moves so impossibly closer, and-

“No.” 

And George falls to pieces.

Dream draws back, smiling at the level of debauchery on George’s face, his incredulous frown, the way his lips move to say something, but no sound comes out. He turns, walking slowly towards the door. He throws a small, “I’ll see you around,” behind his shoulder, and George looks at him in frustrated awe. 

His feet carry him faster than he can register them moving. He lays a rough hand on Dream’s shoulder, turning him around sharply and pressing both hands to the side of his neck, reaching up to close the gap between their mouths.

It’s  _ glorious _ . Dream’s response is explosive, his lips arching painfully against George’s, and George lets out a pathetic whine, clinging to Dream’s neck as the kiss swells. Dream’s hands- his  _ big, big  _ hands- come up to grip George’s sides, hoisting him up onto the nearest machine like he weighed nothing. He steps in between George’s spread legs, pressing their chests flush together.

The kiss is messy, sloppy, demanding their attention. Dream’s mouth is so hot against George’s chilled skin, travelling down from his lips to his neck, licking a fat stripe of George’s unmarked neck. “You’re such an asshole,” George whimpers, shuddering at the touch.

“Am I?” Dream taunts, murmuring against his skin. “I have a feeling you like this.” He sucks at George’s throat, and George’s back arches involuntarily. His hands make home in Dream’s hair, messing the wavy lengths, pulling gently.

Dream hums. “Pull harder.”

He does, and a moan escapes Dream’s throat. George smiles at the sound, pulling again, hard enough now that Dream faces him, pupils blown out, panting shallowly. He plants a sweet, chaste kiss on Dream’s lips.

“I do like this,” George whispers against his lips. “A bit too much, I think.”

They almost forget the sweatpants in the dryer in their haste to get back to his apartment. 

* * *

George’s lighter flicks on with a gentle click, and his cigarette lights. 

Dream lies next to him, watching in muted wonder. 

“Do you always smoke after you hook up with somebody?” he asks, peeling the covers off his bare body, crossing over to George’s en suite bathroom. 

“Usually. Yeah.” 

Dream hums, and he hears the sound of running water hitting the porcelain of the bathtub. He takes another drag of his cigarette, flipping his phone over to check the time.  _ 2:42 _ , it reads back to him.

“What the fuck are you doing?”

He hears Dream chuckle. He hates how it makes him feel like laughing too. “Come in here, honey.”

George rolls his eyes. “Don’t call me honey.”

“Whatever. Get your ass in here, now.”

George taps the butt of his cigarette on his bedside table, leaving it as he walks over to his bathroom. “What are you doing?”

Dream turns back to him, smiling. “I’m running you a bath.”

“I don’t like baths.”

“And I don’t give a fuck. Get in.” 

He watches as Dream extends an inviting hand, beckoning George over. Reluctantly, he takes it, slowly stepping into the warm tub. He glances at the way Dream’s body glistens with evidence of their orgasms, sweat and tears and glittering desire. 

The water sloshes as he lowers his body, bracing himself on the sides of the tub. “Move over,” Dream mumbles. “for me.”

George does. Dream climbs in with failed grace, and they laugh together as water spills over the tub. He cozies up to George, pressing George’s back to his chest, and they sit in silence for a while, breathing in each other’s comfort. 

Dream wraps his sturdy arms around George’s slim waist, rubbing softly at his sides, up his arms with soapy water. “Do you want me to wash your hair?” Dream mumbles against his bare shoulder, and George wants to laugh, sigh into the water, drown himself at the hands of this criminally beautiful man. 

He hums in response, and Dream reaches over George to grab the shampoo bottle. He massages gently into his scalp, warm hands holding George steady. George wants to fall asleep like this, let his fingers prune in the warm water.

It’s been a long time since he’s been close to somebody this way.

“We’ve met before,” Dream mumbles. “Years and years and years ago. I don’t know if you remember.”

George is too sleepy to register fully what Dream’s saying, but he hums anyway, letting him continue. 

“You look the same as you did back then.” Dream’s hands rub into George’s hair, before trailing gently down his spine. “Beautiful.”

“‘M beautiful?”

“So beautiful,” Dream whispers. “I wanted to know you then, but you never spoke to me.”

“‘mhy not?”

“Don’t know,” he says. “Do you remember who I am, George?”

George is too far gone to respond.

Dream scoops water with his palms and washes the soap out carefully, making sure it’s soft and clean. His touches are tender, wrapped in some kind of adoration, and for once, George isn’t scared of it. 

He leans back into Dream’s chest, feeling the steady beat of his heart, and closes his eyes. Dream soaps his shoulders and washes his back, humming a tune that George almost recognises. 

“Don’t fall asleep here,” Dream chides lightly. 

“’m not.”

“You look like you are. Go back to bed.”

George huffs. “Carry me.”

“You’re such a baby,” Dream mutters, but climbs out of the bath anyway. He grabs the nearest towel to dry himself off, and then helps George out too, towelling him down. George sways slightly, comfortable and warm and dizzyingly at peace, and Dream scoops him up smoothly, bringing him back to bed. 

He’s half asleep as Dream lays him down. He’s almost gone as Dream tucks the covers under his chin and slides in next to him. He’s asleep as Dream kisses his forehead, and says ‘Goodnight, George.”

* * *

When George wakes up, his bed is empty.

* * *

George tries to forget the way Dream kissed him. He tries to scratch off the memory of Dream’s burning hands, big and warm and possessive. 

The bruises Dream left fades quicker than he liked, and by the third day, George almost cries at the blank flesh. 

It’s like the night never happened.

He hates himself for being so affected. Is this how Amanda felt? How everyone who he’s hooked up with, left before dawn, and ghosted, felt? Attachment has never felt so painful to him.

He camps in his bedroom for hours on end, only getting up to change from one set of pajamas to a fresh pair. He sits in the tub at night, trying to squeeze the way Dream’s fingers rubbed in scalp out of his memory. It doesn’t work. It never does.

George looks up at the walls, painted yellow in the warm fluorescents. He can hear the storm raging outside his window, pouring rain banging against the glass. Thunder strikes. The walls tremble.

The paint seems to melt into a pool of insatiable desire. He wants to climb out of the tub and lick it, revel in its poison. He wants to carve his heart out of his chest and hold it, bleeding on the floor.

He wants the rest of his body to rot, to sink into the moulding of the floor, his heart still in his hand, perfectly untouched. 

“Cor cordium,” he whispers to himself.

His heart beats for the first time in seven years, and it beats for Dream. 

* * *

He holds the pill bottle in his hands one morning, glancing up from the little letters to his wretched face. His skin is ghostly, stretched over high cheekbones, and his eyes swell red. His breathing shallows, and he slams the pill bottle back down on the bathroom counter.

_ No. _

_ Not today. _

* * *

It’s been three months since his mother died. George decides today’s the day he walks out again, almost a full month since Dream left him without a word, without a goodbye. No number, no note, no nothing, and the anger that he felt has since been extinguished, leaving a trail of greyed ashes where Dream slept on his bed.

For once, the sun is shining outside his window, painting the London pavements in soft golden, wrapping each cotton cloud with a thinly-woven halo of glimmer. Fresh air hits him and stings his lungs, chill biting his nose and turning its tip a dusty pink. 

He stops by the florist for two bouquets of white roses. The ones he received before the funeral had wilted away, but a part of him felt too guilty to throw them out. The cards still hung on for dear life, watching as their counterparts faded to brown, shrivelling and falling petal by petal.

“Thanks,” he mutters to the shop attendant, who gives him a soft smile as she hands over the bouquets wrapped in pale pink tissue. He grips them, forcing a weak smile, and leaves. 

The walk to the cemetery is a quiet one. It’s a Tuesday, so the streets only hold the occasional clique of giggling girls, the streets nearly bare. He passes through the cemetery gates, steering past headstones to find his parents.

His mother’s last request was to be buried next to her husband. Together their headstones lay, side by side in life and in death. The stones glittered in the sunlight, marbling and whirling as he sat in front of them. 

George places one bouquet neatly atop the middle where their graves lay. Dozens of flowers had been left for his mother- he assumes from her friends- but his father’s patch lays dismally empty. 

_ Henry Davidson, _ it reads. He looks at it in hollow pity. 

“I wish I was here, too.” 

George never cries. It’s what he’s proudest of; no matter what he’s done, what’s happened to him, he’s never cried a day in his life. His stoicism used to scare his mother, and impress his father, and his ability to make do with what he had, to chug on through life’s obstacles, followed him well into adulthood.

In the serenity of the spring afternoon, sunlight weaved into the veins under his skin, he feels like crying. Under the secrecy of the foliage, he feels the pinprick of tears behind his eyeballs. He doesn’t let them fall.

“I wish I was gone, too.”

Minutes pass in silence as he stares silently at the engraving of his parents’ names in their headstones. Birds sing and the trees whistle in the wind, and he closes his eyes.

There’s one more person he has to see.

A ways away from his parents’ headstones, a smaller, older headstone lay. He crosses over to it in quiet contemplation, feeling the afternoon sun kiss his skin. 

“Hey, you,” he whispers, not letting his voice crack. “I haven’t been here in a while.”

The engraving in this headstone looks faded, moss grown over and caked in dirt. There are no flowers laid down here. George lays his second bouquet down softly, careful not to crush any of the delicate petals. 

“It’s been a long time since I last saw you,” he says. He glances up at the sun. “Remember days like these? They’re so rare, the sun shining as bright as this. We’d take our bikes and cycle through the town. We always ended up in some field, and we’d spend the whole day there.”

He watches clouds roll lazily by. “I wish I went with you,” he murmurs. “I should have gone with you. Maybe then-” he stops short, breath hitching. “Maybe then you’d still be with me.”

Silence pours into the gap between George and the headstone, sparkling and poignant. 

George has never cried before. 

Maybe today, he’ll start.

“Fancy seeing you here today.”

_ You. _

George lets go of his breath, seething, trembling. He doesn’t have to turn around to know who it is.

_ You. _

“You.” 

“Me.”

George staggers to get up, his hands balled into fists by his side. “You fucker.”

Dream chuckles. George wants to kill him.

“That’s not very nice of you, Georgie.”

He whips around, eyes alight, mouth dripping fire. “Fuck you.” he seethes. “Fuck you, Dream. Get out of my face.”

“I’m not here to start a fight.”

Dream looks the same as he did the last George saw him; jeans and a hoodie and beat up sneakers. He raises his hands in surrender, and George has to swallow down the memory of his hands everywhere around him, on him, in him.

“If you don’t leave me the fuck alone,  _ I’ll  _ start one.”

They watch each other in heated silence, George poised ready to punch him across the face. He doesn’t see why he shouldn’t.

“You left without a word.”

“I do that, sometimes.”

“You  _ left  _ me alone. After that night.” His voice is shaking, and he wills it to stop. “I’ve never let anybody see me like that, and you just  _ left. _ ”

His heart is burning in his chest, glowing embers sizzling against the walls of his lungs. He wants to strike, slap Dream across the face, watch that nonchalance drop from his lips. 

He’s never felt so angry before. He’s never felt so emotional before. His stoicism is breaking, debri crumbling, and he doesn’t stop to pick it back up.

“Do you want me to apologise?” Dream’s voice is soft, treading carefully around shattered glass. “I’m sorry I left. I said before, you only see me-”

“When you want me to see you.” George spits, finishing for him. “Bullshit. That’s fucking bullshit, and you’ve said it a thousand times.”

“It’s true.” 

“Well, fuck your truth!” George yells. “Fuck you and your stupid hands, your memories, your stupid mouth. Fuck you, Dream!”

Dream stays stone cold silent. George’s stare hardens, and bludgeons on. “I don’t want a fucking apology. I want an  _ explanation _ . I want to know why you left, why everyone keeps leaving, why I’m- I’m so fucking  _ alone! _ ” 

His fingers are trembling, and his voice wavers. “What is it, Dream? What is it about me? Why does God  _ fucking hate me? _ ” 

The torrent of tears pulls him in every direction, flushing him against the breakwaters. He struggles to keep up, to tread water, to keep his head above water. It anchors him, drags him down and white caps lull him to a tragic sleep. His tears streak red-hot down his face.

George has never cried before.

Today, he starts.

His sobs rack his body in powerful waves, hiccuping breaths as he breaks the water that drowns him. He crumples, picture perfect stoicism falling to pieces, and cries. He cries for pain, for grieving, for his parents he’s lost and his sisters who never loved him. He cries for himself, the loneliness that shrouds him, that blankets his shoulders in deceitful comfort, for a life that changed far too soon.

He doesn’t notice Dream crouch beside him, pulling him into his arms. They sit like that for minutes as George relishes in the emotions now escaped, shouted into the world, let go and made free with each tear he allows. 

“You’ve been so strong, George,” Dream whispers into the shell of his ear. “It’s okay to be weak sometimes. It’s okay to let go.”

_ To be weak, to let go. _

“I hate being weak.” George murmurs through soft hiccups. He curls himself into Dream’s warmth, that fresh smell of pinecone and fabric softener. “Where were you?”

Dream dips, pressing a sweet kiss in the middle of George’s forehead. He sweeps the dark hair out of his eyes. “Nowhere, George,” he murmurs. “I was always with you.”

George frowns. “No, you were gone. I didn’t see you for weeks.”

“Yes, but I saw you. I kept watching over you, just in ways you never noticed.”

George peers through pink, puffy eyes at Dream, drinking in the beauty of his eyes, twinkling with admiration. “Don’t stay away, please,” he whispers. For the first time, he begs. “Just come, stay with me.”

Dream sighs, tucking a strand of hair behind George’s ear. “Okay,” he agrees. “I’ll stay.”

* * *

Dream’s been staying at George’s apartment for two weeks now, made home on the right side of his bed. He coaches George through new programming jobs, cooks him meals, walks with him every evening. Spring passes them by quietly.

The pill bottle hides in the medicine cabinet behind the mirror. 

They don’t sleep together as much as they do stay up together, watching reruns of old movies and relishing in each other’s company, brandishing each other with wordless giggles and chaste kisses. 

George doesn’t feel as alone anymore. He gets to hold Dream’s hand every day, mark his skin with pretty purple bruises. He gets to dance in the kitchen to shitty love songs that play on the radio, gets to read his shitty poetry to someone who will listen, gets to fall asleep with Dream’s arms around him.

They’re happy. George wakes up every day to the man he could call his own, freckles littering his skin, backlit by the London sunrise.

They’re happy. They sit together in the coffee shop in the same chairs they sat in the first time they talked. 

They’re happy. George eats every meal with Dream, but his fingers still itch for a cigarette.

They’re happy. 

They’re happy.

They’re happy.

_ No, they’re not. _

Dream wakes up every day to an empty bed, and the stench of cigarette smoke wafting through the apartment. He finds George on the balcony every morning with a lit stick in his hand, shivering in the cold. 

Dream finds him passed out in the shower, skin rubbed raw.

Dream wakes up to his screaming in the middle of the night, holding him close to his chest as he cries, as he remembers all that he wishes to forget. 

George prays to a god he doesn’t believe in,  _ please, please, please. Let this be enough. _ He clasps his hands together in desperate prayer.  _ Let me be happy, please. _

No god listens.

* * *

“Tell me about them.”

They’re lying on the couch after dinner, Dream’s head laying on George’s lap as they watch the sun set. George twiddles with a lock of his hair, and glances down at him.

“My parents?”

“Yeah.” Dream shifts, facing him. “What were they like?”

George hums. “Sweet. Kind, I think. They cared a lot about me, but I think I was hard to love.” He chuckles hollowly. “My mom always fussed over my sisters, making sure they were okay overseas. Sent them money and such, always wanted to go and visit them.”

“Did you ever go?”

“No.” He says simply. “I mean, I wanted to sometimes, but if they couldn’t come back, why should I go see them?”

“That’s fair,” Dream murmurs. “Have you spoken to either of them?”

George remembers the call with his sister, the dropping receiver, the numb silence. “Yeah,” he says, voice laced with sympathetic nostalgia. “Yeah, not that long ago. She was the reason I went to the clinic. She set up the appointment and everything.”

Dream’s voice is low. “She cares about you.”

He snorts. “If she really cared, she would have come home. She left me with all this,” he says, gesturing around to nothing in particular. “alone, two funerals. An orphan at 25.”

He doesn’t want to talk about them anymore. His tongue sits fat and numb in his mouth, unmoving, unyielding. 

“What about you?” 

Dream smiles slightly. “I asked first.”

“I wanna know!”

“It doesn’t matter,” Dream’s hand comes up to cradle George’s jaw. “I don’t remember most of my childhood, and I never really knew my parents.”

“That’s all you’re gonna tell me?”

“Yup.” Dream’s fingers trace George’s features lightly. “Tell me more.”

George sighs, reclining his head and knocking against the back of the couch. “We used to go on family holidays every year to America. We had a beach house in Malibu, I think, or somewhere in California. We’d trek around the mountains, surf on beaches, get as much sun as our pale asses could get.” He smiles at the memory, trailing deep into the forest of his thoughts. The path before he is desolate, run down; he hasn’t been here in centuries.

“Sometimes,” his voice begins to shake. “Some years, my best friend came with us.” 

He closes his eyes, remembering hollering laughter and scraped knees. The sun shining brazenly on their backs as they swam among reefs, ignoring the calls of George’s mother back on the shore. “We always had the best of times with one another.” 

His heart sinks. Tearfully, he drags his gaze away from the path, stopping where he is. He doesn’t want to remember. He’s already spent so long trying to forget.

But Dream is relentless. “Where is he now?”

George swallows loudly. “He died when we were seventeen.”

Dream inhales sharply. “I’m-”

“Don’t you dare say you’re sorry.” George’s words are curt, cutting deep into his own skin. “You have nothing to be sorry for.”

“I shouldn’t have brought it up.”

“You shouldn’t have,” George agrees. “But you did. And now there’s no going back.”

Dream stays silent, letting George rot in his own discomfort.

“Nick is- was,” he corrects himself, trying to even his breathing. “was my best friend. We spent our whole childhood together. His dad taught me how to cycle. My dad taught him how to swim.”

“We used to cycle down this pathway every evening. We’d go through town, and right to the outskirts of London. There was this field that we loved to watch the sunset from, and we’d park our bikes and sit on the grass and talk.” His heart is hammering in his throat, painful thick stoppering his voice. He swallows, and continues. “I think I was in love with him. He was the first person who ever really cared about me, and really  _ saw _ me.”

He doesn’t dare look down at Dream, through glassy eyes and tears threatening to spill over his lashes. “I never told him, of course. He was my best friend. I didn’t wanna mess that up. So I kept it like a secret and it burned me to my core. We never kept anything from each other, and I had never-ending guilt eating me alive.”

Nick’s laugh echoes in the chambers of his memory. He blinks, and traitorous tears fall. “We were gonna graduate together, you know? We had it all planned out. We would graduate, move to America together, go to some school of computing. We had each other, and that was enough for us.” His nose blocks, and he breathes shallowly through his mouth. “That was enough for me.”

“He died the day before my eighteenth birthday.” 

The statement is spoken. The secret aloud. George wants to stuff it all back in, eat his words and his tongue for dessert. He wishes he never said anything, but as he looks down at Dream, his emerald eyes are glassy, red with understanding, with pervasive knowing.

“He’d gone cycling by himself because I was busy. Busy sending my sister off to the fucking airport.” He laughs through broken tears, and he wants to slap himself.  _ Stop it. Stop crying. _ “He was hit by a driver or something. The one day he doesn’t wear a helmet. The one day I’m not with him. The one day-” his voice falters, and a sob hiccups through his words. “The one day I could have saved him.”

It’s a confession he’s never made, not in the seven years since Nicholas Armstrong was struck and killed by a speeding car. His bike was mangled, and he hit the ground head-first, and was pronounced dead at the scene. George Davidson was the first person to get there- he had cycled through roads and between cars, panting, praying,  _ hoping _ , it wasn’t true.

It was true. George looked on in solemn anger, in muted grief, in a body that couldn’t comprehend, in a mind that was moulded from that day. He crouched by his best friend, his first love, and held his hand. Two fingers shut his eyelids, but he would never forget the look, frozen in Nick’s eyes.

Fear. Pain.

Regret.

George Davidson graduated high school alone. He burned the acceptance letters from the university he had planned to go to with Nick, watching in stoic anger as flames licked at the paper and consumed it whole. With it he burnt his love, his emotion, his hopes and his dreams. 

The funeral not only buried Nick, but George too. 

“I’ve never hated anything more in my life than I’ve hated death,” he says now, voice squeezing in pain. It comes out as a whisper, as a whistle in the wind. “Death took everything from me.”

Silence fills the apartment, broken only by hiccups and sniffles from both the men who sit together, crying for the loss of innocence, gone too soon. For the life that George could have lived. For George, who had to grow up too fast.

“For seven years, it’s been me against death.” He continues like a man possessed. He wants to stop, but it’s like a dam broken, water pouring out in a torrent of memory. “It took Nick, then my dad, then my mom. I wanted it to take me,” his voice turns pleading, whimpering. “I wanted to go too. I wanted to be free from this stupid fucking life. I wanted to see- to see Nick again.”

“But it never came. No matter how many times I’ve tried.” The words are bitter in his mouth. “Every time I tried I just woke up again, and I’m so fucking tired of waking up alive.”

Dream’s voice surprises him. “How did you stop?”

“Stop trying?” George chuckles hollowly. “I just gave up. If death won’t take me, I’ll take him. One of us has to outlive the other. I know it’s not gonna be me but,” he swallows. “I’ll die trying.”

* * *

Fall comes faster than they can register it. They live now in peaceful coexistence, making light conversation as they cook each other breakfast, as they shower to get ready in the morning. 

It’s everything George once wished for. 

But it’s not enough. 

He wants to be happy with Dream, snaking his arms around his waist, resting his cheek against his broad back.

But it’s not enough.

Sometimes George sleeps for days. Sometimes he doesn’t sleep at all. Sometimes he’ll tap Dream on the shoulder, mid-stroke and plead, “I can’t, I can’t do this right now.”

“This isn’t good for you,” Dream says now, sliding the door to the balcony open, stepping out into the chill. “You’re barely eating. You’re not sleeping. George, you’re skin and bones.”

“I don’t feel like eating,” George says simply, bringing his cigarette to his lips. 

“You’re killing yourself.”

He chuckles. “Yeah? I wish it’d happen faster.”

Dream lets out a long sigh. “Just… come in soon, okay? Don’t freeze to death.”

George ignores him. Looks out into the grey sky, and prays for death.

The pill bottle sits still in the bathroom cabinet.

* * *

“George?”

He can barely hear him under the water. 

“George!”

Fists bang at the bathroom door. 

“You’ve been in there for ages. Are you okay?”

_ No. _

George lets the air loose from his lungs. 

_ No, I’m not. _

He opens his eyes slowly under the water. It stings, but it’s bearable. He doesn’t want to breathe. He doesn’t want to cry anymore. He doesn’t want to feel like this.

“George, I’m coming in.” He hears before the door bursts open, and suddenly Dream’s hands are on his back and he’s coming out, he’s breaking the water, he’s breathing, gasping for air-

Dream is yelling at him. He doesn’t hear any of it. 

“-you’re crazy, you’re fucking crazy. What is wrong with you? Are you trying to drown yourself in your bathtub? What the fuck, George?”

“I don’t wanna be here anymore,” George mumbles.

“George,” Dream’s voice cracks. “You can’t keep doing this. I’m calling the clinic for you, and you’re going to see that doctor again.”

“No!” George wails. “Please, no, please don’t do this. I can’t, I can’t handle this anymore!”

His body is sopping wet against Dream, dampening his hoodie, but neither of them really pay attention. George’s chest is heaving with sobs, and Dream’s shushing him gently, humming a familiar melody.

“You need to take your medicine.”

“Why? Why?” George mumbles. “I don’t want to.”

“George, please,” Dream begins to plead. “I can’t see you go on like this. You’re killing yourself, and it’s killing me to watch it just happen.” He clenches his jaw, taking George’s chin in his fingers and turning him to force him to look at Dream. “You said you could have saved Nick, and you regret that you couldn’t. I’m not making the same mistake you did.”

Fury burns low in George’s heart. “Don’t bring Nick into this,” he spits. 

“I’m going to. I’m not letting you die, George, and I’ll do anything to keep you alive. Even if it means-” Dream stops short, words caught in his throat.

George feels his heart stop. “If it means what?” he demands.

Dream’s breathing shallows. He pushes out his words. “Even if it means I have to leave.”

Fear strikes George cold, shivers scuttling down his vertebrae. He can feel his heart pounding- it’s the only thing he feels. “What?”

“George-”

“No.” George hisses. “You’re not leaving me again.” He rises out of the tub, reaching for his clothes. “You can’t.” 

“George, think. Think about it, really, and tell me why I’m here.”

His voice is pressing on broken keys, and he crosses over to George, clutching his hands in his bigger ones. “Think, George. Do you remember me?”

“No- Dream- What? I don’t understand-” George tries to pull his arms away, but Dream’s grip only tightens.

“Seven years ago, you stood over Nick’s grave at his funeral. You stood with your parents under the sycamore tree, the one that’s since been cut down. You didn’t cry. You didn’t let yourself cry.” 

George blinks at him, pupils blown wide, incredulity painting his features. “How do you know that?”

“Think! George, think. You looked up, you saw someone. You saw someone with blond hair and-”

Somewhere in the recesses of his memory, familiarity floods George’s brain. Melancholic nostalgia blurs his vision. “-and emerald eyes,” he finishes for Dream, a breathless whisper. “You were there.”

“I was there,” Dream nods. “I was everywhere you were, remember?”

_ In the days following Nicholas Armstrong’s death, George Davidson didn’t talk to anybody. He stayed quiet, hood pulled over his face, and hid from the pitiful smiles and the sympathetic condolences. He didn’t want them. He hated them. _

_ Shoulder met shoulder in a painful collision, one that bounced back and snapped him out of the brooding clouds of his thoughts. George looked up, and the words he was ready to hurl died in his throat. _

_ “I’m so sorry,” the boy said, crouching down to pick up their books. George looked at him in muted interest, at his soft blond hair, the way his emerald eyes twinkled.  _

_ The boy at the funeral.  _

_ “Don’t worry about it,” he murmured, bending down to help him. They smiled at each other for a moment as they passed books between them, and then the spark was gone, and they moved forward with their day.  _

_ George saw him constantly. At the lunch tables, under the tree reading, walking down the streets. He watched from afar, never daring to go any closer to him. _

_ He built the courage to say hi once more, to ask how he knew Nick, why he was at the funeral. The morning he prepared himself, facing his mirror, rehearsing the same questions he wanted to ask. _

_ He left for school. Searched for the boy, looked for blond hair, scouring for emerald eyes. _

_ Nothing. _

_ The boy was gone. _

And here he is now, shaking George awake in his bathroom.

George stills. Asks slowly, “Who are you?”

Dream looks at him. “You still don’t understand?”

He shakes his head.

“That day you took your medicine. After we met at the coffee shop. You didn’t see me for a week, right?”

Oh.

“And,” Dream breathes. “You haven’t been taking it since, have you?”

_ Oh. _

George feels like glass. Hollow, transparent, fragile. He falls and breaks his knees. He cries and explodes his heart. He wants to cry, wants to scream, wants to rip his vocal chords out of his throat and lay on the floor until the cold grave of death comes for him.

“You’re not real.”

Suddenly, George understands. The incredulous looks at the coffee shop. The way he had disappeared after the eulogy at his mother’s funeral. The bruises that faded too fast. Gone, without a trace.

“You’re not real,” he echoes again. 

Realisation is a curse that burrows its head in the pit of George’s stomach. “Why are you here?”

“You made me,” Dream says softly. “I keep you here. I come when you’re at your lowest, and I bring you up from there.” He laughs softly. “It worked better the first time, didn’t it?”

George doesn’t laugh. “Where are you, really?”

“In your mind,” Dream whispers. “You’re the one who just pulled you out of the water. You’re the one who keeps telling you to eat. You were right when you said that one of you has to outlive the other. But you’re fighting a battle against yourself, George, not against death.”

Pretty tears spill over George’s lashes. “I don’t understand.”

“You’re keeping you alive.”

“No, you’re keeping me alive.” George splutters. “It’s  _ you _ , I want  _ you. _ ”

“George, I’m not real,” Dream pleads softly. “That’s why you don’t see me on your medication. You don’t need me when you take it.” 

“Then I won’t ever take it. I’ll keep you here forev-”

Dream’s voice drops to a broken whisper. “George.” 

“Please, Dream, I don’t want to be alone again,” George begs. “I’ve been alone all my life, I can’t- I can’t let this go.”

“There’s nothing  _ to _ let go. I live in you, George. I’m not real.”

He breaks. The glass shatters and his heart bleeds, cut by shards and shrapnel and Dream’s loving whispers. 

“You can’t go on like this, honey,” he pulls George into him, but all George can feel is the hollowness of his hands, the cold of his absent body. “I need you to stay alive. I need you to take that medicine.”

“I- I-”

“Promise me.”

George sighs, chest heaving in pain. “I promise.” 

“Good,” Dream smiles, eyes watery. “Call Dr Murphy when you wake up, and tell her you want to see her.”

George nods wordlessly. He feels Dream’s arms start to go limp, preparing to get up. He grasps at his arms, heart reaching for nothing.

“Wait, please,” He begs. “Stay. Just a little while more.”

Dream looks at him, emerald eyes pitiful. For once, George doesn’t want to hate it. 

“Okay. Just a little while more.”

* * *

George wakes up in his bed. He turns to his right, where Dream should be.

The bed is creased. The pillows are amiss. The subtle fragrance of pinecone and fabric softener lingers.

_ Cor cordium. _ His heart beats despite his pain. It lives on, rising to see a new day. It sits untouched, unburdened, unweighted. 

_ Heart of hearts. _

* * *

“Mr Davidson?”

He looks up from the newspaper, at the voice that calls him. The receptionist smiles at him gently, and says, “She’s ready for you now.”

George nods, returning the smile. He gets up, folding the newspaper so that the half-done crossword puzzle faces upward, and he leaves it on the chair for somebody else to finish for him.

The walls are clean, organised, the fluorescent lights a little too bright for his liking. He no longer holds the urge to kick something over, his heart washed over with peace and calm and the reminder of someone who once loved him.

Door 26 looms before him. His hand trembles as it comes up to knock weakly. “Come in,” he hears, and he presses his weight onto the door handle, sliding into the room.

Dr Murphy turns around in her chair, and her eyes light up when she sees him. “George!”

He stands awkwardly at the doorway, fighting the thick stopper in his throat. “You were right.”

She smiles at him. Somewhere in his heart, it warms him, a blooming feeling in the wilting meadow. “Why are you here today?”

He closes his eyes. Remembers blond hair and emerald eyes. Remembers pinecone and fabric softener, soft hoodies and crossword puzzles. He remembers Dream, and his loving hands that held him. He remembers biking through fields, running through roads and echoing laughter. He remembers Nick, and a life that could have been lived.

He breathes for the first time in his life. “I want to get better.”

**Author's Note:**

> many of these things are personal to me, and i projected that same pain into this fic. this is actually a rendition of what Could have happened at the end of waterlily but thank god, it's not. i'm sorry if this fic affected you severely, and please come and talk to me if you need to.
> 
> all my love,
> 
> agora
> 
> [twitter](https://twitter.com/agowa_)   
>  [tumblr](https://meltiers.tumblr.com)


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